Actor Isiah Whitlock Jr. died December 30 after a brief illness in New York. The news was confirmed to Deadline by Whitlock's manager, Brian Liebman. He was 71 years old.

A member of the American Conservatory Theater, Mr. Whitlock initially intended to pursue a career in professional football before an injury led him to focus on acting. 

A man of notable size, he spent the early years of his career focused firmly on theatre, making his Broadway debut in Larry Gelbert's Mastergate in 1989, with Peter Hall's Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice to follow that very same year. His final Broadway performance would come in 1999, when he served as an understudy in the 1999 revival of The Iceman Cometh.

He would fly from the wings in the 2000s, however. Mr. Whitlock was a favored performer of director Spike Lee, appearing in She Hate Me, 25th Hour, Red Hook Summer, Chi-Raq, BlacKkKlansman, and Da 5 Bloods. In those films, he developed a vocal throughline for his characters that would become his career catchphrase: a distinct, extended pronunciation of the word "shit", with a high and tight "ee" vowel sound.

Aside from his association with Lee, Mr. Whitlock is perhaps best known for his performance on the HBO television series The Wire, where he played the corrupt state senator Clay Davis. In the 2011 film Cedar Rapids, he would poke fun at the mythological level of importance the series has taken on for its fans, playing an obsessed insurance agent who does impersonations of Omar Little, another character in The Wire.

Mr. Whitlock is survived by his extended family.